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Whose Devil? Which Details?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Gordon Belot
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Abstract

Batterman has recently argued that fundamental theories are typically explanatorily inadequate, in that there exist physical phenomena whose explanation requires that the conceptual apparatus of a fundamental theory be supplemented by that of a less fundamental theory. This paper is an extended critical commentary on that argument: situating its importance, describing its structure, and developing a line of objection to it. The objection is that in the examples Batterman considers, the mathematics of the less fundamental theory is definable in terms of the mathematics of the fundamental theory, and that only the latter need be given a physical interpretation—so we can view the desired explanation as drawing only upon resources internal to the more fundamental physical theory.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 72 , Issue 1 , January 2005 , pp. 128 - 153
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

‡

Earlier versions of this paper were presented at Columbia University and at the 2003 Pacific APA. I would like to thank two anonymous referees, Mark Wilson, Larry Sklar, Tim Maudlin, and especially Bob Batterman for helpful comments and suggestions. This paper is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. SES-0135445. The online version of the paper, available as PITT-PHIL-SCI preprint 00001515, includes an appendix, omitted from the present version, that surveys recent results on quantum chaos.

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